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Where ARE You Guys?

Posted by :James Howden On : September 11, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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(This piece, or something like it, appeared in the weekly column I write for my down-home weekly newspaper in July. It concerns graduation ceremonies at an Ottawa high school, but my observations, I’m quite sure, apply to schools all over North America. At least. And here we go again with another school year, and worries that only get more pronounced.)

I was sitting in a warm gymnasium on a bum-squaring chair, draped neck to knees in a black polyester academic gown, sweating and watching 112 kids I didn’t know make their final pass across a high school stage. It was Commencement at the east Ottawa high school where I drilled (and thrilled?) suburban grade nines in literature, life and verb tenses, from early May until late June’s parole. I had spent many a stifling June evening — this was my first morning graduation exercise — sitting in similar high school auditoria and gymnasia (and one cafetorium!)

My most recent school is named after Canada’s first woman Senator, Cairine Wilson. CWSS started its school day at 8 a.m., and maintained its morning persona by holding its graduation exercises at 10. Whew! One mixed blessing of that unusual hour is that the city councillor, the MPP, and the federal Member of Parliament were all present for the ceremony and, naturally, all had something to say. Fairly painless, though my fellow staff, who were buying squares on the how-long-will-this-take lottery, might not agree. The speeches were gracious and not overly long, and the MPP made a rather stirring appeal to the young people to be adventurous global citizens, to truly change the way the world operates. Nice!

The principal, an earnest, energetic and hardworking young man – yes, I’m getting to the stage where my bosses and my doctors seem like upstarts to me – was surprisingly nervous and bland in his speech. Still, there are always nuggets for a word nerd/performance geek like me. He told the students that “you are the gifts from our hearts to the future”. Perhaps a tad overheated, but still I found it sweet. Among his (too) numerous quotations was this soaring, simple truth from the saintly Mother Teresa: “There is a greater hunger for appreciation than for bread.” I love this statement, even more true in our well-fed part of the world than in Teresa’s Calcutta.

GIRLS. BOYS. There’s another truth that I expected to find at yet another high school graduation, and I did. It’s the same story as when I started keeping statistics at my former high school, somewhere in the mid-nineties, about the relative achievement levels of boys and girls. Looked at through my Advancement-of-Women lens, it’s a happy story: females are the majority in nearly every university faculty, including medicine and even law in some places, because they are absolutely kicking the boys’ arses in high schools. Wow! I say, “You go, girls!” But while I don’t blame the boys, I am worried about them. Despite our prosperity, things are not easy for the kids today, and it seems clear to me that there are far too many guys being left behind. I’ve been keeping statistics for years now, and the recent numbers were a confirmation of what I’d seen back home.

A few numbers for you. (Hey, what can I say? It made two stuffy hours pass more quickly.) Graduates? 62 girls to 50 boys, not a huge spread but significant. Top students in the various subjects? 24 girls to 5 boys, including a 12:2 ratio in maths, sciences and physical education, for goodness’ sake! Ontario Scholars? 23 girls, 8 boys. French immersion certificates (bilingualism being SO valuable, especially here in Ottawa)? 19 to 6. Students averaging 90%? 5-0. Shutout.

There’s a lot more scribbled data where that comes from, but that’ll do for now. I wish I had thought to add up the tens of thousands of dollars by which the scholarship awards to girls exceeded that given to the guys. (I’m old-fashioned enough, or something enough, to still find this public announcement of scholarship amounts slightly déclassé.) There are plenty of reasons and theories behind this clear and growing gender gap, but I’ll bet that whatever high school you know and care about most had similar numbers. I just think we should be noticing these things and talking about them. Are we letting down the lads? Is there anything we can do?

Return of the Chalk Monster

Posted by :James Howden On : May 15, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Sorry to have been so long since the last post. (Hmm. The Last Post. What a mournfully gorgeous thing that is when played on a trumpet. November 11. Remembering the cause of peace, honouring the sacrifice, praying for the dead and the eternally changed. That is a thousand leagues from my recent inability to publish my tiny cerebral explosions.) As for my Web site silence, I can only say that education is to blame.

I am now, and again, a fully-fledged High School Creature. After months of substitute gigs in several Ottawa schools, I have taken over a position at a suburban educational emporium. (Cairine Wilson Secondary. Know who she is?) I’m not sure who has been more challenged and distressed by the change, me or the ninth and tenth graders I teach. (Okay, it’s the students. Who am I kidding?) Administratively, organizationally and interpersonally, it’s been a fair upheaval. For one thing, this place begins its classes at 8:10 a.m., so that my bride has had to adjust her morning routine in order to get Junior to his bus, which had been my job. And yes, I got a little lost on the way here the first day, and there were computer problems, key problems, and behavioural problems (not all mine!). Curriculum, planning, materials, mindset – all of this has needed considerable massaging and headscratching.

But for all that, and though many of the students have been reluctant to accept graciously the new Ogre in room 222, I feel at home here already. I still don’t know where a lot of things are in this funky, ‘70s-designed school layout, but I’m getting there. But being in the language classroom again – two French classes, one English – feels fine. Last Friday, after perhaps the most frustrating day of trying to get my new kids on the same page as me, was a turning. There were more smiles. There were glances that said, Hey, maybe this clown won’t be so bad after all. I could lower my shield and sword, bring some energy and animation to what was being taught, and not worry about losing the kids to side conversations and general distraction. Cool!

My writing schedule is completely thrown off, though. Not only have I not been posting to my Web site for the last two weeks, but the less visible writing projects that I’ve been trying to nourish lie in a dusty, chaotic heap in my home office and in foul-smelling corners at the back of my mind. Forgotten, but not gone, I hope.

The most urgent reason for returning to education was a financial one. I had a steady and adequate salary when I was writing for and with the former Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson. As an independent flogger of my own ideas, though, my income has been, well, less than stellar. (If I was a more confident/arrogant writer and weighed a little less, I might have called myself a “starving artist”.) After a year and a bit of literary exploration, I have had to bow to economic realities. (Can’t stand economics OR realism!)

Less urgent, but more important – at least to me – was that even during the best periods of my exclusive writing life, something was missing. It was my Teaching Jones. I love that whole relationship: Educators and Those Who Need Them. I love being at the centre of a community of learners, of which I am one. Sometimes high schoolers don’t recognize their own hunger to know, blunted as it can be by distraction and the habits of enforced ignorance. (And, I’ll say it, by poor teaching.) But when those coloured lights start to sparkle and glow, there’s nothing like it. I often felt, even when I was writing speeches for the visit of Heads of State or for national honours to the greatest of Canadians, that I was likely doing less for the world than I had done as a chalk-stained wretch or whistle-toting basketball guru.

And so I’m back in class. I surely hope to balance this return to Shakespeare and the passé composé with my ongoing quests as a writer. But if my next school needs a basketball coach, I don’t know how I’m going to keep all those ducks in a row. So many darned ducks!